#DriveSafer

Making Britain's roads safer

The brief

As part of their national ‘Drive Safer’ campaign, Aviva are raising awareness of the dangers of texting while behind the wheel. Our task was to support the campaign with a piece of immersive content in conjunction with high-profile members of the Premiership Rugby Wasps team – Ashley Johnson, Jimmy Gopperth and Joe Simpson.

The challenge

Aviva had calculated that a driver looking at their phone for five seconds while moving at 45 mph will have travelled the length of a rugby pitch – 100m – while distracted. We needed to show this in a compelling and unforgettable VR experience that the Wasp players would try while the Aviva media team captured their reactions, and then edit and release the content on social media – so it needed to be both impactful and believable.

The solution

We built a fully immersive virtual reality experience using detailed CGI, and then created a mixed reality setup to enhance the viewer’s feeling of ‘presence’. The players took the wheel in a real stationary car before putting on an Oculus Rift headset and finding themselves inside a VR car that mimics the real one. The experience then takes them on a car journey down a country road at night with various distractions and hazards flashing up around them, until they give in to temptation and read a text – culminating in a devastating crash.

The experience

By creating the experience in VR, we were able to place the viewers in a shocking ‘life or death’ scenario that hammered home how dangerous texting at the wheel really is – and how violent car accidents can be. With none of the players aware of what the experience would involve, their reaction was genuine and hard-hitting – strengthening Aviva’s campaign message and racking up over 9,000 views on Facebook. We then created a 360° video version of the driving experience for social media channels so people could experience the crash for themselves, which has so far clocked up over 38,000 views.